The research project sought to understand the histories and development of the three chosen archives in South America, focussing in particular on the challenges they had faced and how they had overcome them. Its purpose was not only to record these histories but also to provide recommendations for those setting up archives elsewhere both within and outside Latin America. To this end, the team contacted the archives and requested interviews with members of the archives. We were able to secure interviews with workers currently working at the archives as well as those who had previously worked there (this was especially important in the case of the Colombian Centro Nacional de Memoria Historica, where there had been several recent changes in personnel). We also interviewed persons who were not workers in the archives but that worked in other archives, museums or communities in these countries with an interest in how human rights violations were being registered. Through these interviews one is able to understand the histories of the different histories of these archives, the ways in which they approach their work and the challenges that each has and continues to face.This data arises from the British Academy-funded research project ‘Documentality & Display: Archiving and Curating Past Violence in South America’. The project drew upon the notion of 'documentality' in the philosophy of Maurizio Ferraris, by which the social order is understood to be founded upon the ways in which human lives are inscribed, both materially and imaginatively, to study key centres of post-conflict documentation in South America. The project asked: How should those effected by state violence and armed conflict record and collect their experiences to lend them effectively to future justice processes and future use? How are questions of inclusiveness, categorisation and material delimitations dealt with by established and emerging archives and documentation centres? As societies develop, they need also to attend to how past experience is recorded and displayed. In part this relates to how criminal prosecutions take place, for archives and documentation centres become important for fact checking. They are also important sources of cultural understanding, providing materials for cultural awareness and modes of representation for future generations to understand the past. That is, how the traces and records of past violence are ordered, and how they are displayed, will involve decisions that construct meanings and structure debates. Documentation centres and archives are crucial sites of socio-cultural reproduction in this regard that operate as keepers of the traces of violence and as participants as curators, influencing our imagination and our understanding. The research was conducted in Argentina, Chile and Colombia in 2018-2020, and was carried out by a team of four international researchers, led by Professor Vikki Bell. The focus was on three important archives, one in each country, that have documented human rights abuses. In the cases of Argentina and Chile, these archives concern the abuses that occurred immediately before and during military dictatorships that took place in those countries (in Argentina between 1976 and 1983; in Chile between 1973 and 1990). In the case of Colombia, the archive is an institution that has attempted to address the on-going violence of the armed conflict. The three archives are as follows: i) in Chile, the FUNVISOL archive, in Santiago (the archive of the Vicaría de la Solidaridad). ii) in Argentina, Memoria Abierta, in Buenos Aires. iii) in Colombia, the Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica, in Bogotá. The research aims were: first, to share the stories of the origins of these archives, which are distinct in each case, and to offer these histories as ways of understanding the dynamics at stake within and across the three countries; secondly, to explore how the archives have been put to use, with an emphasis on how they have been and continue to be used by legal institutions, as well as their educational and artistic uses; thirdly, to offer recommendations for those who may be considering or in the process of setting up comparable institutions in other countries. To facilitate this, interviewees were asked directly about the challenges that their work had faced, and where relevant, how these challenges had been overcome. As a sociological project, we mostly employed face to face qualitative interviews with individuals and sometimes small groups. The interviews were semi-structured and in-depth, lasting an average of two hours. In total, 31 individuals were interviewed in 16 interviews. The team also engaged in library-based research, including at the archives themselves. Additionally, there were research trips to other institutions, and the team interviewed other individuals beyond the archives themselves, to give context and to deepen our understanding. The project studied how documents of violence are constituted, collected and preserved in archives and documentation centres, the decision-making that takes place at those sites - and its problems - and how these centres are being utilised as ways of creating engagement with the violence of the past in ways that are culturally important. These involve legal processes, that recognise past crimes and establish the rule of law as well as socio-cultural processes that seek forms of sustainable peace through the understanding that make possible, that is, through understanding what present and future societies inherit from the experience of conflict.

The individuals interviewed were approached for interviews because they held key roles within the archives. They were suggested by the archives themselves, by the research team's previous contacts or through a 'snow-ball' approach, ie. by interviewees suggesting names of others to be approached. Some of the interviews were group interviews, but most were interviewed individually. The interviews were semi-structured and lasted between one and three hours. We followed the topics of our general interview guide but we allowed the conversations to flow to topics that the interviewees deemed most important for us to know and understand. The interviews were conducted by at least one of the team, but most often by three or all four members of the research team. The interviews were conducted in Spanish, recorded, transcribed and are available here in both Spanish and English translation. The data consists of 16 interviews with 31 individuals. A list of the interviews and the institutions for whom the interviewees work or previously worked is included.